Recommendations from the European Resource Efficiency Platform (EREP) on how Europe can transition to a resource efficient economy fall far short of what is needed, according to Friends of the Earth Europe.
The platform, established to provide advice on how to improve resource use in Europe, released its first policy recommendations today. It involved a broad range of stakeholders including Friends of the Earth Europe.
Magda Stoczkiewicz, Director of Friends of the Earth Europe said: “Friends of the Earth Europe has actively participated in this process, but beyond some small steps forward in some areas, we find that the outcome doesn’t match the task. What we need is a strong push to ensure action is taken to improve Europe’s resource efficiency, driven by solid legislation, not more nice words”.
Friends of the Earth Europe welcomes the strong push to maximise reuse and recycling, and to minimise residual waste – whether landfilled or incinerated. However, it is important to be explicit that this will require bans and taxes on landfill and incineration.
Magda Stoczkiewicz continued: “We welcome the focus on developing footprint indicators for Europe’s use of land, water and carbon, but now we must rapidly agree targets to reduce this resource use.”
Friends of the Earth Europe believes that a major priority for the next year of the platform’s work is to ensure that resource reduction targets are proposed, based on the land, water, material and carbon footprint indicators, and ensure that the Commission and others work to perfect the methodology and data sources for these indicators.
